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Faculty Senate is moving ahead with semester plans

With the new semester underway, the Faculty Senate is moving ahead in addressing its priorities for the 2006-07 academic year. Chair Michael Fitzgerald says three issues are at the crux of the Senate’s agenda.

The first and most fundamental focus, he says, is on the University’s budget.

“We’ve been able to follow the budget process closely through the Budget Task Force meetings,” Fitzgerald says. “The budget drives everything. We can have lofty ideas about how we’d like to educate our students, but without the resources, thoughts are just thoughts.”

Another priority for the Faculty Senate is continued consideration of a proposal approved by the Senate last year related to faculty hiring and search processes which was later overturned by a referendum election.

The proposal made recommendations for changes in dealing with searches for new faculty. After the election, the Faculty Senate was asked to hold conversations to seek consensus about what faculty wanted to do in this area.

“We want to ensure that faculty searches are conducted in a fair manner,” says Fitzgerald. “Senators last fall were asked to reconsider the overturned policy and come back this spring to see how we should proceed.”

Fitzgerald says another priority is related to faculty contract negotiations. “It’s a complicated issue,” he says. “We need to talk about how we’ll handle our day-to-day business if there are job actions.”

Last fall, Fitzgerald said his three main goals as chair were to make the Faculty Senate more an open forum for the campus, help junior faculty take more leadership roles and help develop a more collegial atmosphere on campus.

“The Senate has certainly been providing an open forum,” Fitzgerald said. “And junior faculty are stepping up to the plate in very impressive ways.”